Secrecy Quotes

Nothing is so oppressive as a secret: women find it difficult to keep one long; and I know a goodly number of men who are women in this regard.

Power corrupts, and there is nothing more corrupting than power exercised in secret.

Nonviolence abhors fear and therefore, secrecy.

What is mine, even to my life, is hers I love; but the secret of my friend is not mine!

Everyone agrees that a secret should be kept intact, but everyone does not agree as to the nature and importance of secrecy. Too often we consult ourselves as to what we should say, what we should leave unsaid. There are few permanent secrets, and the scruple against revealing them will not last forever.

One always, sooner or later, comes upon a city which is an image of one's inner cities. Fez is an image of my inner self. ... The layers of the city of Fez are like the layers and secrecies of the inner life. One needs a guide. ... There were in Fez, as in my life, streets which led nowhere, impasses which remained a mystery.

We see with what keenness and zeal the frivolous business of Freemasons is conducted, by persons knit together by the secrecy of their union.

The secrecy of Masonry is an honorable secrecy; any good man may ask for her secrets; those who are worthy will receive them. To give them to those who do not seek, or who are not worthy, would but impoverish the Fraternity and enrich not those who received them.

If you wish to preserve your secret, wrap it up in frankness.

To keep your secret is wisdom; but to expect others to keep it is folly.

The secrecy thing has gotten to be more and more prevalent in films, and maybe that's good. It's nice to go see a film and not know anything about it. Sometimes I feel like we know too much about films.

Secret enmities are more to be feared than open ones.

Secrecy is the element of all goodness; even virtue, even beauty is mysterious.

Secrecy is the enemy of efficiency, but don't let anyone know it.

Mysteries are due to secrecy.

When you get into a hotel room, you lock the door, and you know there is a secrecy, there is a luxury, there is fantasy. There is comfort. There is reassurance.

Power expands through the distribution of secrecy.

I have no doubt that the nation has suffered more from undue secrecy than from undue disclosure. The government takes good care of itself.

Nothing so diminishes democracy as secrecy.

That theatrical kind of virtue, which requires publicity for its stage, and an applauding world for its audience, could not be depended on, in the secrecy of solitude, or the retirement of a desert.

Friendship, love, and piety ought to be handled with a sort of mysterious secrecy; they ought to be spoken of only in the rare moments of perfect confidence, to be mutually understood in silence. Many things are too delicate to be thought; many more, to be spoken.

There is nothing that has caused me to meditate more on Plato's secrecy and sphinx-like nature, than the happily preserved petit fait that under the pillow of his death-bed there was found no 'Bible,' nor anything Egyptian, Pythagorean, or Platonic - but a book of Aristophanes. How could even Plato have endured life - a Greek life which he repudiated - without an Aristophanes!

Thy soul shall find itself alone ’Mid dark thoughts of the gray tombstone— Not one, of all the crowd, to pry Into thine hour of secrecy. Be silent in that solitude, Which is not loneliness—for then The spirits of the dead who stood In life before thee are again In death around thee—and their will Shall overshadow thee: be still. [...]

We are a democracy, and there is only one way to get a democracy on its feet in the matter of its individual, its social, its municipal, its State, its National conduct, and that is by keeping the public informed about what is going on.There isnot a crime, there isnot a dodge, there is not a trick, there is not a swindle, there is not a vice which does not live by secrecy.Get these things out in the open, describe them, attack them, ridicule them in the press, and sooner or later public opinion will sweep them away.

Cross Creek belongs to the wind and the rain, to the sun and the seasons, to the cosmic secrecy of seed, and beyond all, to time.

The only ones to profit from illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing are the owners of the fishing fleets who remain hidden behind veils of corporate secrecy.

I have replaced my instinct for secrecy with an instinct for confession.

Nuclear weapons production and testing has involved extensive health and environmental damage .... One of the most remarkable features of this damage has been the readiness of governments to harm the very people that they claimed they were protecting by building these weapons for national security reasons. In general, this harm was inflicted on people in disregard of democratic norms. Secrecy, fabrication of data, cover-ups in the face of attempted public inquiry, and even human experiments without informed consent have all occurred in nuclear weapons production and testing programs.

We've got to break through the wall of secrecy. It's America's fate.

I have play'd the fool, the gross fool, to believe The bosom of a friend will hold a secret Mine own could not contain.

The history of medicine proves that in so far as man seeks to know himself and face his whole nature, he has become free from bewildered fear, despondent shame, or arrant hypocrisy. As long as sex is dealt with in the current confusion of ignorance and sophistication, denial and indulgence, suppression and stimulation, punishment and exploitation, secrecy and display, it will be associated with a duplicity and indecency that lead neither to intellectual honesty nor human dignity.

Shy and unready men are great betrayers of secrets, for there are few wants more urgent for the moment than the want of something to say.

While privacy strengthens all our bonds, secrecy weakens and damages connection. Lerner points out that we do not usually "know the emotional costs of keeping a secret" until the truth is disclosed. Usually, secrecy involves lying. And lying is always the setting for potential betrayal and violation of trust.

You cannot hide any secret. If the artist succor his flagging spirits by opium or wine, his work will characterize itself as the effect of opium or wine. If you make a picture or a statue, it sets the beholder in that state of mind you had when you made it. If you spend for show, on building, or gardening, or on pictures, or on equipages, it will so appear. We are all physiognomists and penetrators of character, and things themselves are detective.

Children should always be brave and do something about bullying. Its not okay to stand by and let it happen. Bullies thrive off secrecy. Children should tell someone if they see someone being bullied.

There are many hands touching ballots after a voter drops his ballot into the ballot box. There is no guarantee of ballot secrecy for anyone, which makes the whole system vulnerable to intimidation and bribery.

I think an awful lot of the reasons people put forward for not liking Hillary Clinton play into deep-seated, negative female stereotypes: ambition, secrecy, calculating. I mean, that is Lady Macbeth, a kind of cold woman. I don't think that's Hillary. And I don't think people would judge a man in the same way.

Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.

But then, so far as I know, I am the only performer who ever pledged his assistants to secrecy, honor and allegiance under a notarial oath.

The necessity of procuring good Intelligence is apparent & need not be further urged-All that remains for me to add, is, that you keep the whole matter as secret as possible. For upon Secrecy, Success depends in most Enterprizes of the kind, and for want of it, they are generally defeated, however well planned & promising a favourable issue.

The Air Force had put out a secret order for its pilots to capture UFOs. For the last six months we have been working with a congressional committee for investigating official secrecy concerning proof that UFOs are real machines under intelligent.

You are also asked to take an oath, and that's the oath of service. The oath of service is not to secrecy, but to the Constitution - to protect it against all enemies, foreign and domestic. That's the oath that I kept, that James Clapper and former NSA director Keith Alexander did not. You raise your hand and you take the oath in your class when you are on board. All government officials are made to do it who work for the intelligence agencies - at least, that's where I took the oath.

Secrecy is the original sin. The fig leaf in the Garden of Eden. The basic crime against love.

The human brain is the most public organ on the face of the earth, open to everything, sending out messages to everything. To be sure, it is hidden away in bone and conducts internal affairs in secrecy, but virtually all the business is the direct result of thinking that has already occurred in other minds.

In such a case secrecy must be absolute to be effective, and although mere vague curiosity induced many persons of my intimate acquaintance to ask to be allowed to just go in and have a peep, I never admitted anyone.

Secrecy was the problem; transparency the obvious cure.

Secrecy, once accepted, becomes an addiction.

Abuse exists because of secrecy. If I can use this platform and talk about it and break the silence, somebody can get the help and support they need. It's such a common problem, and it doesn't need to be. All you have to do is talk about it and break the silence.

Those without the gate frequently question the wisdom and right of the occultist to guard his knowledge by the imposition of oaths of secrecy. We are so accustomed to see the scientist give his beneficent discoveries freely to all mankind that we feel that humanity is wronged and defrauded if any knowledge be kept secret by its discoverers and not at once made available for all who desire to share in it. The knowledge is reserved in order that humanity may be protected from its abuse at the hands of the unscrupulous.

A proper secrecy is the only mystery of able men; mystery is the only secrecy of weak and cunning ones.